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Friday, December 06, 2013

CPD REPORTS: 3 Sex Crimes Alleged Inside Center On Halsted Since '09

Last week, the Inside-Booster community newspaper published a report about the number of crimes that have occurred at 3656 N. Halsted, the address of the Center on Halsted.

CWB has been provided with more than 60 pages of police reports that document crimes that have been reported at the Center. We will be sharing some of those reports with you in the coming days.

To be clear, we believe the Center on Halsted and most other social service agencies in our neighborhood provide essential services that should be located here. Our disagreement is with the agencies' public denials of any connection whatsoever between a limited number of their clientele and crime in our neighborhood.

We also strongly disagree with most of the services' policies regarding cooperation with the police. While they all profess to have strong and healthy relationships with the police department, CWB can tell you with certainty that many police officers in our district disagree with those assessments.

Police report documentation shows that neighborhood agencies' co-operation with the police department has ranged from full co-operation to selective co-operation to roadblocking.

Today, we will share with you the official details of three sex crimes that are alleged to have occurred inside the Center on Halsted. As you can imagine, some of what follows is graphic and may be difficult to read.

The police department blacked out some portions of the reports to protect parties and personal information. We have provided these public records exactly as they were given to us. Please remember that allegations do not equal guilt.

after a verbal altercation with her [21-year-old] ex-boyfriend, he pulled her by the back of her shirt into the mens bathroom [at Center on Halsted], pulled her pants down to her knees and...sexually assaulted her for 20 minutes. [...] Victim and offender continued arguing after which offender left building to unknown location.

The disposition of the case is not known.

Max Pagan, 37, was accused of sexually abusing a juvenileinside the Center on Halsted last year.

Criminal Sexual Abuse — July 26, 2012 between 3PM and 4PM

Officers conducting a routine "premise check" at the Center on Halsted were stopped by a person or persons whose identity is not revealed in the police report.

The officers were told that a 36-year-old man allegedly touched a juvenile male inappropriately. The alleged offender, identified in the report as Max Pagan, was standing outside of the Center on Halsted.

According to the police report, in a follow-up interview, the underage victim told officers that he

was in the bathroom when [the] offender who is a stranger to him approached and grabbed victim's cell phone while…the victim was holding it in his hand. Victim pulled his hand away from offender. Offender being a 36 year old adult male, began to caress victim's chest in a sexual manner and offender stated to victim "are you scared?" Offender then proceeded to slide his hand inside the victim's pants through the waist-line and attempted to fondle [the victim].

The victim fled. When asked what he thought the man was going to do to him, the victim told police, "he was going to sexually molest me."

At that point, the alleged offender was banned from the Center on Halsted and was escorted out of the building.

Cook County Criminal Court records indicate that Pagan received 3 years probation in the incident.

Criminal Sexual Abuse — September 25, 2012 9:15AM
According to the police report, a female victim fell asleep inside the COH. She awoke to find a man "standing over her fondeling [sic] her left breast, at which time [she] stated, 'keep your hands offme [sic]."

The alleged offender replied, "Bitch, I'll touch if I want to," prompting the victim to scream for help.

It is so hard to know what to believe because a facility specifically built for people based upon only their sexual orientation logically seems like a place that would have all kinds of sexual activity going on. Am I the only one who thinks the LGBT...and whatever other endless letters they use now...designation is one being used by some individuals as a free pass for whatever they want to do, legal or not?

People need to read the the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). People need to understand this as it relates to issues such as these. Organizations love to use this law, HIPAA, to protect people against police, and they cannot. Read it, because it gives police and other agencies broad authority to exercise their rights to investigate and arrest persons involved in crimes, especially when its domestic crimes which include boyfriend, girlfriend or boyfriend boyfriend. Evidently the police don't know their authority and are bamboozled by these administrators. Also these administrators can also be arrested/prosecuted for not cooperating with the police fully on any criminal investigating which occurs on facility property, which includes stonewalling them on offenders hiding in their property, or identifying offenders. Officers also have the authority to enter and search the property when looking for an offender know to be hiding on the property. Its a licensed facility and thus cannot deny entry of any officer investigating a crime. What if a sexual assault occurs anywhere, do organizations have the right to stop the police from crime scenes, victims, and possible offenders? answer is NOT!, especially in a licensed organization. Learn the law people! It does not include the police or other agencies in the performance of their duties. Actually it gives these agencies more authority.

Having worked as a teacher in inner city schools, any time our students committed a battery or any other crime at school, police were called, offenders were arrested. Us teachers filed and signed reports, and were expected to fully cooperate with the police. We had a strictly enforced zero tolerance policy of any criminal activity inside or outside the school. Furthermore if any teacher, administrator or staff person had harbored a criminal and obstructed police, we would have been charged with obstruction and fired. These social service agency directors/administrators who harbor criminals should be arrested themselves for obstruction, they should be fired, and their agency's funding should be dependent on a zero tolerance policy for any criminal activity. Allowing criminals inside the agency endangers the agency's vulnerable client population.

This situation is never going to change until the grant-providers crack down, until zero tolerance policy is strictly enforced.

The grant-providers are getting kickbacks from the social service agencies to continue funding. There are a few people making LOTS of money from all this. If there were a zero-tolerance policy, they would lose too many clients and thus lose most of their revenue...so that will never happen. One of the executives for The Crib made it clear that she has no intention of changing the status quo when she excused all criminal behavior by saying "These people don't respond well to rules."